In New Hampshire and in Connecticut an indignant population raided private schools which received negro pupils. A mass meeting in Cincinnati demanded that the publication of an antislavery paper in that city should be stopped, and its press was thrown into the Ohio River. The meeting place of the despised agitators in Philadelphia was burned, and, within the year, the editor of an Abolition paper in Alton, Illinois, was murdered. Congress and the legislatures of several states united in denouncing all discussion of the sensitive subject. The Legislature of Illinois joined in this denunciation of the agitators by a resolution of both houses.

In all the work of that session Lincoln had gone with the tide, but now he boldly took his stand apart. He wrote a protest and called upon the members to sign it. In this short and simple document, he admitted that the Abolition movement tended rather to increase than abate the evils of slavery, and that Congress had no power to abolish the system in the states; but he did urge his associates to place on record the declaration that "they believe that the institution of slavery is founded on both injustice and bad policy."

This language, in the light of a later day, is mild to the degree of timidity, but when it was written, twenty-four years or almost a quarter of a century

before the Civil War, slavery never had been arraigned as an injustice in any party platform or by any party leader. In all the Legislature, Lincoln found only one man who would sign his moderate little paper. Dan Stone, a colleague from Sangamon, was willing to write his name upon it, and under it appears the signature, "A. Lincoln."

It was the still, small voice of conscience. The first test had come, and Lincoln had bravely chosen his part. Although he served four terms in the Legislature and became the Whig candidate for Speaker and the chosen leader of his party on the floor of the House, aside from this one act, big with prophecy, history has rescued from oblivion nothing else in his service which foreshadowed his future.

LOVER AND LAWYER

The tragic story of Lincoln's first love. His wooing of Ann Rutledge, the tavern-keeper's daughter at New Salem.

in gloom by her he would lose his

The conflict between her conscience and her heart. - Lincoln plunged death, August, 1835.- Friends feared mind. -A primitive man always in his sentiments. His removal to Springfield in 1837 to begin the practice of law with John T. Stuart. - Too poor to provide a bed for himself. - At once the center of a group of brilliant and ambitious young men, destined to win fame. — Characteristic instance of his integrity. — Paying a claim made by the government. Still working out his debt.

THE story of Lincoln as a lover forms a melancholy chapter. No other experience of his early years gave him so much anguish, no other trial so tested and tempered his nature. If it did not bring him happiness, neither did it embitter him. On the contrary, he came forth from that period of soul-wracking doubt and despondency, a master of his passions, with a patience and a fortitude which fitted him to endure disappointment and suffering.

If Lincoln had a sweetheart in his boyhood, a prying world has been unable to discover the

tender episode. In his youth he was charmed by books rather than woman's looks, and no legends have come down of the gallantry of the Hoosier wood-chopper, sighing and wooing on the banks of Little Pigeon Creek. It is the accepted belief that he escaped a lover's pangs until he was a young man of twenty-five or twenty-six, when the auburn-haired daughter of the tavern-keeper of New Salem smote his heart.

This was Ann Rutledge, a Kentucky girl by birth, a South Carolinian by descent. She was attractive both in mind and in person, refined in manner, and strong in character. If it was love at first sight, Lincoln's fortunes were so low that he did. not venture openly to aspire to her hand in the beginning of their acquaintance, when sometimes he was only a penniless helper about her father's tavern.

Moreover, she was engaged to another. It was not until after this man had disappeared from the knowledge of the village and Lincoln had risen to the surveyorship and a seat in the Legislature, that he told her of his love. It is a tradition that he first opened his heart to her at a "quilting," to which he escorted her, and as a proof that her own heart responded, there was preserved for years the very quilt over which her agitated fingers flew - and the uneven stitches told the story.

absent one.

The girl, however, felt bound in loyalty to the She asked Lincoln to wait until she could gain her release from that obligation. Her letter was sped on the way to its distant destination, and they could only watch for the slow coming of the answer. They waited through the months, and no reply came. At last she promised herself to Lincoln, who was compelled to postpone their marriage indefinitely, because he could not yet support a wife.

In the midst of almost the first happiness which he had ever known, his sweetheart fell sick. Her faithful nature had been unable to free itself from the shadow of the man who had gone away with her pledge to remain true till he came again. The villagers said her heart was breaking for him. More likely, however, it was her conscience rather than her heart that was troubled.

Her sickness ran into a fever, and she was forbidden to receive callers. She disclosed her love for Lincoln by begging earnestly and constantly to be permitted to see him. She could not live, and her family let her have her only wish. The last song she sang was for him. After a few days the end came and Lincoln was borne down with woe. The love of Ann Rutledge had been like a beautiful flower in the hard and thorny pathway of his lonely